1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a carton and corresponding carton blank. More specifically, the present invention relates to a gable top carton and blank therefor having a reduced surface area per unit volume of the carton when compared to conventional gable top carton configurations.
2. Description of the Related Art
Gable top cartons have been known for the better part of the twentieth century. Their characteristic simplicity and resealability have helped to sustain their popularity as containers for traditional liquid food products such as milk and juice, but in recent years they have been used for products ranging from ammunition to soups. Gable top cartons typically begin as generally rectangular carton blanks made of laminated paperboard or similar material. The carton blanks are provided with a number of creases to facilitate folding and forming the blank into a rectangular carton having the characteristic gable top.
When fully folded, filled and sealed, the gable top cartons include a gabled top structure that engages a plurality of side panels. Traditionally, each side panel is generally perpendicular to each adjacent side panel. The panels are each divided from one another by a single vertical score line extending the entire height of the sidewall. These side panels form the characteristic hollow rectangular body of the container and define the volume of product that a carton may hold.
In accordance with accepted design approaches, the design of a traditional gable top carton to accommodate a specified volume involves adjusting the dimensions of the four sidewalls defining the rectangular body that is to contain the specified volume. Very often, these product volume requirements are specified by the packager and selected from standard volumes that have been deemed accepted in the consumer market for the product (i.e., pint, quart, half gallon, gallon, half liter, liter, etc.). When this design approached is utilized, there exists a generally established relationship between the surface area of the carton blank and the carton volume. The surface area of the carton, and particularly the area of the four sidewalls constituting the bulk of the surface area, is thus generally fixed for a given container volume.
Additional end panel extensions and end panel shapes are often employed to assist in folding and sealing the traditional gable top cartons. These added extensions and shapes result in added carton surface area per unit volume of product.
The traditional approaches to gable top carton design have heretofore devoted little effort to optimizing the carton surface area per unit volume of product. Several reasons for this lack of effort include problems of fabrication of such a carton on a linear form, fill and seal packaging machine, the appearance of such a carton due to an increased number of crease lines and their placement on a carton, and gripability of such a carton.